Digital Assets

Global assets are assets that are recognized by a system in whole and can be recognized by all smart contracts and clients.

Contract Assets

Contract assets are assets that cannot be used in other contracts and are only recognized in their specific contracts. These type of assets are recorded and stored in the private area of the smart contract.

Digital Identity

For a business to become more reliable and build strong identity management, a digital identity is a must. NEO’s Digital identity feature is identity information of individuals, organizations and other such things that prevail in an electronic form or data.

NEO offers a safeguarded mode to store, transact and authenticate the digital identity which is efficient and quick.

Smart Contract

NEO’s smart contract is a set of commitments that are illustrated in a digital format; these contracts contain agreements on how contract participants review these commitments.

In simple terms, a smart contract includes its protocols for negotiating the contract terms, it automatically verifies the contract and enforces the clauses.

NEO Smart Contract 2.0 includes a lightweight NEO VM(Virtual Machine) that has great features like high certainty, high concurrency and high scalability.

As we mentioned earlier, NEO was created with a different motive of digitizing assets from the traditional market. NEO wishes to integrate digital assets, digital identity and smart contract under its platform.

Introduction to NEO and GAS tokens

NEO offers two types of digital tokens – NEO(Antshares) and GAS(Antcoins). These tokens are elaborated as below:

NEO(Antshares)

NEO has 100 million tokens, with 50 million of those tokens were distributed through crowdfunding and the remaining were locked up for a year. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, NEO is not divisible and the minimum unit will always be 1.

The significant advantage of holding NEO tokens is that they get the voting rights as well as the right to dividends in the form of GAS.

GAS(Antcoins)

GAS also has 100 million tokens which can be generated and is quite similar to NEO. Unlike NEO, GAS is divisible.

GAS is convenient for resource allocation and network charges. This is used for operations like running dApps( decentralized applications ), smart contracts and creating incentives for bookkeepers in maintaining the blockchain.

Key differences between NEO and Ethereum

Since NEO and Ethereum try to serve the same market and niche, it is worth studying their vital differences. This could also help to prefer one over the other.

Preference of developers in choosing between the two

NEO fares much higher than Ethereum in terms of language support and is much favored by advanced developers. NEO supports languages like C++, C#, GO and Java. So with knowledge of any of these applications can be built for NEO blockchain.

Ethereum has only one programming language, Solidity. Solidity is a language specifically built for Ethereum and does not have much reach with developers. It has to be first learnt to develop decentralized apps and smart contracts.

Transaction speed

NEO can handle 10,000 transactions per second whereas Ethereum blockchain can handle approximately 15 transactions per second. This highlights the power of NEO over Ethereum or Bitcoin.

Blockchain features

Whereas in Ethereum the smaller units are called ‘gas’, the key differentiator is that Ethereum has only one digital token and NEO has two – NEO and GAS.

As an intuition, consider NEO as the stocks of a company and GAS as the dividend.

Divisibility

Ethereum is divisible into smaller units whereas NEO cannot be further divided. You have to use the other token of NEO, GAS if you want to make fractional transactions.

You cannot, for example, make 7.5 or 12.2 units of NEO transaction since it has to be a whole number.

Government support

It has been widely accepted that NEO is China’s take on Ethereum. NEO is widely supported by the Chinese government whereas Ethereum is not supported by the government.

A guide to choosing a good NEO wallet

Finding a NEO wallet that is suitable for all your needs can be tedious. You can consider the following features before storing currencies into one:

NEO and GAS compatibility: Before choosing a wallet, remember that not all wallets support every cryptocurrency. Select a wallet that conveniently stores NEO and GAS tokens.

Ease of Use: The wallet you choose has to be elegant and provide a user-friendly experience.

Security and Backup features: Storing funds either online or offline makes it necessary to look for a secure wallet. Look for features like advanced encryption, two-factor authentication and multi-signature functionality.

Private Keys: Private keys are crucial to have access to your cryptocurrencies. Choose one where you have control of the keys at any moment.

NEO does not offer a wide selection of wallets, but the good ones are:

The future of NEO

NEO is a great project with prospects almost greater than Ethereum.

NEO runs on a specifically developed proof of stake consensus mechanism which is no doubt the best proof of stake mechanism available. NEO’s blockchain is also quantum computer proof which gives it a better advantage in comparison to other blockchain projects.

Also the recent price rally of NEO in which it rose from 6 U.S. dollars to 52 U.S. dollars almost overnight, reaching the top 5 market cap and bypassing NEM, DASH, STRAT, and LTC. Such an appreciation in value should evidently mark NEO’s strength.

The Chinese regulation is an area of concern for NEO. After Chinese trying to regulate cryptocurrency industry and banning ICO, the future of NEO is not bright. Once the ban on ICO is lifted, NEO could well defeat Ethereum in popularity.

Conclusion

To make NEO the next big thing in the cryptocurrency market, the developers are working beyond the Asian countries to make it successful in the western part of the world. As an open source platform, NEO is all set to take over the digital world and its economy.

NEO also has a considerable amount of backing from giants like the Chinese Government and Alibaba. These factors make NEO a worthy digital coin in crypto space.